The Syngman Rhee Era, 1946-60

Even though Syngman Rhee had been handily elected president by the
National Assembly in 1948--with 180 of the 196 votes cast in his
favor--he quickly ran into difficulties. South Korean politics during
Rhee's regime (1948-60) essentially revolved around Rhee's struggle to
remain in power and the opposition's efforts to unseat him.
Constitutional provisions concerning the presidency became the focal
point.

Because Rhee's four-year term of office was to end in August 1952
under the 1948 constitution, and because he had no prospect of being
reelected by the National Assembly, he supported a constitutional
amendment, introduced in November 1951, to elect the president by
popular vote. The proposal was resoundingly defeated by a vote of 143 to
19, prompting Rhee to marshal his supporters into the Liberal Party.
Four months later, in April 1952, the opposition introduced another
motion calling for a parliamentary form of government. Rhee declared
martial law in May, rounded up the assembly members by force, and called
for another vote. His constitutional amendment to elect the president by
popular vote was railroaded through, passing with 163 votes of the 166
assembly members present. In the subsequent popular election in August,
Rhee was reelected by 72 percent of the voters.

The constitution, however, limited the president to only two terms.
Hence, when the end of Rhee's second term of office approached, the
constitution again was amended (in November 1954) by the use of
fraudulent tactics that allowed Rhee to succeed himself indefinitely.

In the meantime, South Korea's citizens, particularly the urban
masses, had become more politically conscious. The press frequently
exposed government ineptitude and corruption and attacked Rhee's
authoritarian rule. The Democratic Party capitalized on these
particulars; in the May 1956 presidential election, Rhee won only 55
percent of the votes, even though his principal opponent, Sin Ik-hui,
had died of a heart attack ten days before the election. Rhee's running
mate, Yi Ki-bung, fared much worse, losing to the Democratic Party
candidate, Chang Myon (John M. Chang). Since Rhee was already eighty-one
years old in 1956, Chang's victory caused a major tremor among Rhee's
supporters.

Thereafter, the issue of Rhee's age and the goal of electing Yi
Ki-bung became an obsession. The administration became increasingly
repressive as Liberal Party leaders came to dominate the political
arena, including government operations, around 1958. Formerly Rhee's
personal secretary, Yi and his wife (Mrs. Rhee's confidant, and a
power-behind-the-scenes) had convinced the childless Rhee to adopt their
son as his legal heir. For fear that Rhee's health might be impaired, he
was carefully shielded from all information that might upset him. Thus,
the aged and secluded president became a captive of the system he had
built, rather than its master.

In March 1960, the Liberal Party managed to reelect Rhee and to elect
Yi Ki-bung vice president by the blatant use of force. Rhee was
reelected by default because his principal opponent had died while
receiving medical treatment in the United States just before the
election. As for Yi, he was largely confined to his sickbed--a cause of
public anger--but "won" 8.3 million votes as against 1.8
million votes for Chang Myon. The fraudulent election touched off civil
disorders, known and celebrated as the April 19 Student Revolution,
during which 142 students were killed by the police. As a result, Rhee
resigned on April 26, 1960. The next day all four members of the Yi
family died in a suicide pact. This account has been challenged by some
who believed Yi's family was killed by his bodyguards in hopes of
enabling Rhee to stay on.

Rhee, a self-righteous man convinced of his indispensability to
Korea, loathed his critics and opponents and equated criticism with
treason. Although his record as a national hero and his skill in
handling United States-Korean relations won him admiration during the
immediate years after the Korean War, Rhee became a captive of the
people surrounding him. In the late 1950s, his policies were largely
without results as rapid changes in the economy and society deeply
affected South Korea's system.

Society under Rhee

The transformation of South Korean society during the Rhee era was of
revolutionary proportions because of the convergence of a number of
forces. A major impetus for social change was the greatly enhanced
opportunity for education. Although Japan had introduced a modern
education system to Korea, opportunities for Koreans were purposely
limited, particularly at the secondary and university levels.
Educational opportunities were greatly expanded immediately after the
Japanese defeat, and the trend continued through the Korean War and
afterwards. Higher education provided more opportunities for upward
mobility to a large number of young people. This opening also meant
greater political awakening among the young, particularly in view of the
strong emphasis placed on democratic values and ideas by teachers and
intellectuals. For the first time, Korean youths were provided open
access to democratic ideas both at school and through the mass media.
These Western ideas became the norm against which to judge the
government in power when the exigencies of the war period were removed.

A land reform law enacted in June 1949 also had a leveling effect on
Korean society. Under this law, nearly 1 million sharecroppers, or
approximately 40 percent of total farm households, became small
landowners. The reform also brought about the decline of the landlord
class that had formed the backbone of traditional Korean society for
centuries. Because big business and industrial groups did not emerge
until the late 1950s and early 1960s, almost everyone in society was
placed on an equal footing.

The Korean War had the most significant effect on the social system.
The movement of large armies up and down the length of the peninsula was
accompanied by civilian refugees. People of diverse backgrounds
intermingled for prolonged periods, deeply affecting everyone's way of
life. The indiscriminate destruction of property during the war also had
the effect of homogenizing Korean society.

The war caused hundreds of thousands of young men from rural areas to
enlist in the army, exposing them to modern organization, technologies,
and a new world outlook. The war also gave rise to a large officer corps
that later developed into an increasingly significant social group.

Better education and the government's postwar economic policies
contributed to accelerated urbanization. Reconstruction projects created
jobs in the cities, while the government's effort to control the prices
of farm products made it unprofitable to till small farm plots. The
urban population increased rapidly from 11.6 percent in 1940 to 24.4
percent in 1955 and 28.3 percent in 1960. These changes had a direct
impact on politics because the better-educated and urbanized elements
became increasingly vocal and more independent in their political
judgments.

The Postwar Economy

The war had destroyed most of South Korea's production facilities.
The South Korean government began rehabilitation as soon as the battle
zone near the thirty-eighth parallel stabilized in 1952. The United
Nations Korean Reconstruction Agency and members of the UN, principally
the United States, also provided badly needed financial assistance.
Seoul depended heavily on foreign aid, not only for defense, but also
for other expenditures. Foreign aid constituted a third of total budget
in 1954, rose to 58.4 percent in 1956, and was approximately 38 percent
of the budget in 1960. The first annual United States economic aid bill
after the armistice was US$200 million; aid peaked at US$365 million in
1956 and was then maintained at the US$200 million level annually until
the mid-1960s.

The scarcity of raw materials and the need to maintain a large army
caused a high rate of inflation, but by 1958 prices had stabilized. The
government also intensified its effort to increase industrial
production, emphasizing power generation and textile and cement
production. In order to reduce dependence on imports, such principal
items as fertilizer and steel began to be produced domestically.

The average rise in the gross national product (GNP) was 5.5 percent
from 1954 through 1958. Industrial production led the advance, growing
by nearly 14 percent per year. The tightening of fiscal and monetary
policies in 1958, coupled with the phasing out of the United Nations
Korean Reconstruction Agency program and the reduction in direct aid
from the United States in 1957, caused a shortage of raw materials for
import-dependent industries and led to an overall economic decline. By
1958 Liberal Party leaders paid more attention to political survival
than to economic development. The government adopted a comprehensive
Seven-Year Economic Development Plan in January 1960, but before the
plan could be implemented, the student revolution brought down the
government.